


Camping Trip

by GenerallyHuxurious (GallifreyanOmnishambles)



Series: Kylux Cryptids AU [23]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Campfires, Camping, Comedy, Drowning, Ghosts, Haunting, M/M, Minor Character Death, Monsters, Water Spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 01:25:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10753866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanOmnishambles/pseuds/GenerallyHuxurious
Summary: Kylo takes Hux into the woods to investigate tales of a strange monster. As always things immediately get weird.





	Camping Trip

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glass_Oceans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glass_Oceans/gifts).



> For Glass_Oceans who mentioned Kylo struggling with dark atmospheres in there stories. Sometimes things are a little different.

“I hate you.”

“No, you don't.” Kylo said cheerfully as he climbed over yet another root and turn back to offer a hand. “You just hate some of the things I do, that's different.”

Hux rolled his eyes and sighed. “Okay, fine. I hate myself for agreeing to any of this.”

“Hmm, slightly more accurate. Still about 43% too melodramatic though.” 

For once Kylo had chosen the subject of today's investigation, based entirely on the stories he'd heard about it in a truckers diner the evening before. Which in itself was an entirely legitimate reason for his choice, even if it lacked the sort of in depth research Hux preferred.

Roadside eateries of all kinds were an excellent source for supernatural leads. Most liminal spaces were. The only real flaw was the fact that this sort of informant tended towards inaccuracy thanks to the usual mix of tiredness, alcohol, and mental instability. 

For example- this particular phenomenon had been described as occurring at a campground next to a river approximately half an hour’s hike from the highway.

The highway had been three hours ago.

They had at least brought the camping gear with them, rather than leaving it in the car, but Hux’ knees were screaming at him. They had been for almost the entire time they’d been in the woods. Uneven ground was a pain in the ass to navigate at the best of time, but carrying a backpack made it excruciating.

Kylo had offered to carry the bag, or him, more than once, but Hux could see that the weight of his own pack was beginning to bother his shoulder. There was no benefit in incapacitating them both. Besides there was something undignified about being carried for long distances. It stopped being sexy after about hundred feet and started to get a bit humiliating.

“Just go over what the trucker told you again, yeah?” Hux suggested. “Keep my mind occupied.” 

“Summer of 1970. Three kids and a women go swimming at a wide bend in the river,” Kylo began, “no one’s quite sure anymore exactly what happened but they got into difficulty and the woman drowned. Pretty much every summer since then at least one person has shown up at the diner scared out their mind and babbling about some kind of monster in the water. The dude I spoke to said he saw it when he was seven or eight, in the middle of the day. Some kind of spiny misshapen thing with lots of teeth. He’s had a fear of moving water ever since. But he said it wasn’t just kids that saw it. Apparently his son and future daughter-in-law saw it one night when they were skinny dipping, the month before they had a shotgun wedding. It freaked them out too.”

“And yet people keep on going to this campground?” Hux asked in a tone tinged with disbelief. “Families I mean, not just teens on the hunt for something spooky?”

“Seems that way. The trucker even said he’d been back a few times himself. It’s supposed to be very peaceful.”

“There’s a spindly thing with teeth in the water but it’s ‘peaceful’?!”

The path was widening out now, the gaps in the trees turning brighter as more sun broke through the canopy.

“Hey now, the beach can be lovely whether there are sharks in the water or… oh.”

The campground was, for want of a better word, idyllic. Lush green grass as thick as carpet; trees with blossom that scattered in the breeze; the smells of loam, honeysuckle, and cool fresh water drifting through the warm air. 

It would have been paradise, if it weren’t October.

“Um, correct me if I’m wrong but climatewise this, isn’t right is it?” Hux said slowly as he looked around. 

The US had a lot more weather variation than Hux was strictly used to, but it usually had the decency to change with the latitude. They had not been walking for that long, no matter what his knees told him.

The highway had been winding through a scrubby autumnal landscape for the last few hundred miles. There hadn’t been blossom anywhere else around here for months.

“Kylo?”

“Ssssssh.” The huge man held up a hand and stared off into the distance with his head on one side, like a dog that isn’t sure if someone mentioned treats or not. “Do you feel that?”

Hux took stock of himself, not entirely sure what sense Kylo wanted him to use. Mostly all he felt was the burning in his knees and the inadequacy of his socks. 

“No…” He took a step forward. “Oh.”

An overwhelming peace washed over him. It was like being wrapped in an heirloom blanket made by a much loved but now deceased relative. Comfort. Echoes of happy times. Not a reduction in pain but a sense of freedom from it. A lifting of grief. 

Kylo was smiling softly. Hux wondered what parts of his mind it was affecting. Did his childhood weigh on him a little less now?

Hux had been correct- this place wasn’t right. Not for the site of a drowning anyway.

Very few places held truly happy psychic energy. Most places would, at some time or another, be touched by suffering.

As emotions that most people pushed away, suffering and grief imprinted on the landscape much more readily than joy. Most people hung onto everyday joy and the really big events - weddings, births, the saving of a life - almost always happened somewhere that grief had already marked. Even the most outwardly peaceful deaths were tinged by someone else’s regrets or the pain that had lead to that moment. 

A woman had died in front of three children. Nearly fifty years of frightening encounters had followed. This place should not feel happy.

“Stop thinking so loudly,” Kylo murmured, “you’re harshing my buzz.”

Hux glared at him. “I’m rather ‘harsh your buzz’ - good choice of entirely modern slang there by the way - than get dragged into the water by some kelpie or näcken, thank you.”

“Why, are you finally getting too old to fuck them?” Kylo laughed.

“Fuck you! Mysteriously, I’m too fucking  _ married _ actually, or did that slip you…”

“It was a joke!”

“It’s not fucking funny!”

“Sorry.”

Anger, even fleeting annoyance, seemed to have broken some of the odd sensation that had wrapped around him. He was more aware that his knees hurt, which was irritating but less disconcerting. He didn’t want his perception altering without his permission. Never again.

The campground was a wide diamond shaped meadow, with woodland surrounding one narrow point and the river wrapped around the rest. The water was at its widest span directly across from where they stood. Strangely the river water looked paler there, a sort of glossy turquoise that would be oh so tempting to dive into on a hot summer day. But it didn’t seem to move quite right. Hmmm. Interesting.

Hux dropped his pack and strode as best he could toward the water, breaking stride only enough to scoop up a broken branch about 4 feet long.

“I’m gonna go for a swim.” He shouted back towards Kylo. He had no actual intention of doing any such thing, but he hoped whatever was loitering here couldn’t read his mind and just saw his actions instead. 

He’d just gotten one boot heel into the river when  _ something _ surged up out of the water. 

It wasn’t all that frightening when you were expecting it. The effect was little like an accident in a paleontology department. Brilliantly clean bones- a  _ lot _ of bones- were jumbled together in the incorrect order to create something only vaguely bipedal. It had around eight jaws ranging in size from moose to wolf. There seemed to be bear femurs where its spine would usually be. Skulls turned up in apparently random places. Its claws were made of ribs. Although it didn’t speak it made a horrible grinding, clashing noise as the bones scraped over one another. It was also mostly transparent. 

“Oh, fuck off,” Hux said flatly. He threw the branch out towards where the thing had appeared. 

The wood sailed through the strange jigsaw skeleton and landed in the water where it immediately began to spin.

Hux stepped back onto dry land. The bone creature vanished. The branch kept on spinning.

“Weird.” Kyo muttered by his ear. The man could move quietly when he felt like it.

“Reminds me of that cheap plastic ‘cat’ skeleton you got off eBay last year.”

“The one with a human head and a pelvis where it’s shoulders should have been?”

“And hands for feet.” Hux shuddered at the memory. “Yeah, just like that.”

“Why are we watching a stick spinning round? Its starting to make me feel dizzy.”

“There’s a whirlpool out there.” Hux explained. Kylo just stared at him. He sighed. It was starting to get late and they were both tired. “Let’s get some food and I’ll explain.”

They found what looked like an old brick lined firepit set back from the water. It had been well cared for and was coated in decades of soot. Clearly the trucker had been right that this was a popular spot, even if it was empty now. 

Hux settled down on the unrolled sleeping bags to watch Kylo collecting firewood. Most people would actually have to stand up to do this, but Kylo just stared into the woods with an outstretched hand and a determined expression until sticks, twigs, and the occasional baffled squirrel flew towards him. It was messier, but much quicker.

While Kylo tried to arrange the wood into something like a viable fire, Hux shooed away the stunned rodents and sorted through the food options. 

MREs had been the bane of his existence as a serving soldier. He’d always told himself he wouldn’t eat them again once he retired, but he had expected to do  _ that  _ twenty or thirty years from now, so the once hated objects had become a little comforting reminder of old times. It certainly helped that Kylo was infinitely fascinated by the self heating process; and they were a welcome change to cold snack food at least. 

The sky was turning purple and gold when they finally sat back-to-back with metal bowls filled with hot food. It was a habit in totally new places to keep their eyeline as wide ranging as possible, just in case something malevolent was lurking nearby. It also meant that Hux didn’t have to watch Kylo eating ration pack chicken ravioli with tiny marshmallows scattered on top.

“That stick’s still there.” Kylo mumbled around a mouthful. “Goin’ round ‘n round.”

“Yeah, I think it’ll stay there a long time, ‘til something else knocks it off balance.” Hux said, speaking clearly since he had waited until he’d swallowed before he spoke because he wasn’t a godsdamn animal, thank you. “There’s a whirlpool. Probably the rocks are in just the right place that the water sucks things in, and down, and keeps them. Did you notice how clean and smooth the bones were? Like seaglass. All those animals got sucked in and didn’t come back out. I’m guessing they never retrieved the body of the woman who died?”

“That’s right.” 

Hux and Kylo turned toward the voice with the thick Brooklyn accent.

A woman in a crocheted bikini sat on the far side of the fire. Tightly curled hair was slowly dripping river water onto her shoulders. Her skin was oddly mottled but Hux couldn’t work out if it was vitiligo or something else, and it would have been rude to stare too long.

“Hello.” Kylo said with the same soft smile he’d been wearing when they first arrived.

Keeping his eyes on the newcomer Hux not-so-subtly reached into his backpack for the ball of talismans and charms. “You’re a long way from New York.”

The woman shrugged. “I saw this place in an old National Geographic magazine at my oncologist’s office. It seemed like a peaceful place to wait.”

“Wait?” 

Hux turned his head to try to glare Kylo into better manners, but the angle meant he couldn’t meet his eye. 

The woman raised an arm, turning it slowly this way and that above the fire. The bright light highlighted a malignant distortion of her skin. 

“For God.”

He’d nearly asked which one but Hux managed to hold his tongue and fortunately Kylo did the same. 

“I’m sorry, was it cancer?” He asked instead.

“Mm hmm.” The woman nodded. She put her arm down again, letting the limb pass through the flames. “You weren’t scared of my monster.”

“No.”

“You swore at it.”

“Sorry.”

“Why weren’t you scared?”

They both shrugged. 

“It was a bit Scooby-Doo to be honest.” Hux said eventually. “And it's not an actual threat, is it?”

She just stared at them.

“How did you die?”

“Oh my god, Kylo,” Hux hissed, “you can’t just ask someone how they died! We know she drowned!” He shuffled around slightly so he and Kylo were facing the same way. He surreptitiously linked their hands as he moved.

“Most people don’t try to have conversations with me. Most of them just ignore me or run away when they get to close to the water.”

“Well that’s just rude, we’ll totally have a conversation with you,” Kylo said with a grin, ignoring his grumpy boyfriend, as usual.

“You’re not trying to lure people in, you’re trying to keep them safe.” Hux said, ignoring Kylo in turn. 

“Oooh supernatural lifeguard, awesome!”

“Oh my god.”

“You two are weird.” She said. She shook her head and the fire hissed with the spray. “I’m Gloria.”

“I’m Kylo Ren, this is Donal Sux.”

“Hux. Nice to meet you. So, am I right? You’re not so much haunting this place as acting as a protective spirit?”

Gloria smiled slightly. “I guess. I came here to wait out in nature. Then about a month after I got here someone’s kids went into the water.” She pointed toward the whirlpool. “They couldn’t get out. So I got them out. And sank to the bottom. There were so many things down there. So many animals. There was even a mammoth’s soul down there. And so many lost children.”

Kylo was nodding but frowning. Just like Hux he clearly realised that this didn’t feel like a place that had that kind of energy.

“So I did a deal.” She continued, turning her pointing finger toward the stars slowly appearing above them. “They could all go where they were meant to, and I could stay here to stop anyone else from joining me. Better than dying slowly of cancer, right?”

“That might be the most selfless thing I’ve ever heard,” Kylo sighed. 

“It’s nice here. Animals come here. Families come here and have fun. I suppose I wasn’t ready to leave.” 

Hux slid an arm around Kylo’s waist. He could tell the atmosphere had already been getting to him, but now he seemed to be tearing up.

“I think it’s nice because you’re here,” Kylo said, sounding a little choked up, “we see all kinds of horrible shit. This place is special.”

She shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m just doing what’s right. Can we talk about something else? I don’t get to talk to people much.”

“Sure,” Hux said when Kylo didn’t seem able to answer. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I’ve been in the river since 1970 so… I don’t know. I missed a lot. Like- what happened with Nixon?”

“WELL,” Hux began in his best lecturing tone while Kylo tipped over to giggle against his shoulder, “where to start…”


End file.
